As is known in the art, the provision of a leg rest in combination with a reclining chair offers the user of the chair additional support for the legs of the user. The leg rest should be positioned so as to support the calves and feet of the user to provide maximum comfort and support. In many prior art reclining chairs the foot rest is not adjustable (i.e. the leg rest was static). While useful, such static leg rests have a significant disadvantage in that the leg rest cannot be adjusted to account for the different physical characteristics of a user. Such physical characteristics of a user include, but are not limited to, the height of the user and the leg length of a user.
It is common in the industry when such a static leg rest is used to position the leg rest in a fixed position such that is in an optimal placement to benefit a user with average physical characteristics. Such average physical characteristics can be determined from publicly available databases. However, certain average physical characteristics may differ depending on the gender of a user (for example, males tend to have a greater average height than females). For instance, if the static leg rest is position on the reclining chair to be in an optimal position for a person of average height, the leg rest will not be in an optimal position for a person whose height is greater than or less than the average height. In these cases, the foot rest is positioned so the calves and/or feet of the user are not supported correctly, making the foot rest less comfortable to the user.
A number of adjustable leg rests for use with reclining chairs have been known previously in the art. However, in many cases these adjustable leg rests are cumbersome to use and complicated to manufacture. In addition, the adjustable leg rests that are known in the art do not lend themselves to application to previously manufactured reclining chairs, requiring that the scissor linkage mechanisms be modified or replaced to be adapted to the adjustable leg rests.
The present disclosure provides an adjustable leg rest that meets the need of the art. The adjustable foot rest assembly supports a foot rest pad and is capable of moving between a first position (where the foot rest pad is closer to the front of the reclining chair) and a second position (where the foot rest pad is farther away from the front of the chair) to adjust to the physical characteristics of a user of the chair. The adjustable leg rest is easy to use and simply to manufacture. In addition, the adjustable leg rest of the present disclosure can be retrofitted to existing reclining chairs without replacing the existing scissor linkage mechanism.